Night 49: Nurse Lounge

[vstheworld]

[From here]

A slightly larger and comfier-looking room greeted the pair next. A couch and several cushy chairs littered the space, along with a table, chairs, and a large cabinet, among other things. Definitely wasn't the worst place they could have ended up in, Scott thought. They could have ended up in a fridge or something.

Speaking of fridges. "Anything you wanna grab from in here? I kinda want to see if there's anything in there," Scott said with a little grin, gravitating toward the side of the cabinet where a mini-fridge sat. If he knew mini-fridges, he knew they tended to contain at least one of two things: alcohol or pop. With the former, he didn't want any, but he could think of at least a few people who probably would. With the latter, he didn't really like the fizziness, but hey, there could be free power-ups in them, at least!

Comments

[meitantei.livejournal.com]

Glad they were off the topic of near misses and attacks by the Institute, Shinichi took a step towards the mini fridge. He really didn’t think it was a great idea to be poking around too much at night; these kinds of rooms that didn’t usually see that much patient traffic were probably full of less than savory things. Still, if they could find something that was useful—especially when it came to barter with other patients—that could justify the risk somewhat. How many people were jonesing for alcohol, or even caffeine? If they could find something that valuable, it put them in a pretty good position to trade. For information maybe, or better weapons than meat skewers. Anything.

“Let’s check it out, I guess,” he said, hanging back. “But don’t try to sample anything. I don’t exactly trust the product safety of anything around here after nightfall.” For all they knew, swigging a Nightshift Coke could be a fasttrack train to dysentery...or something even more unpleasant, like Bubonic Plague. Shinichi certainly wouldn’t put it past this place.

[vstheworld]

"Don't worry, I won't. These don't even have power-ups in them or anything. What kind of cheap Coke is this?" Scott pouted as he pulled out one of the few unopened cans of cola and skimmed over the nutritional information. They hadn't even had the decency to mix in a token +1 Speed or anything into the drink. The Coca-Cola Corporation was getting super stingy, Scott thought with a short sigh. Still, he took the can and slipped it into his pocket with the corn skewers. Someone was going to want some, he figured. It would be warm by the time he could trade for anything, no doubt, but he was betting someone desperate enough for a Coke wouldn't care too much.

"There's one more can of Coke in here, and the rest is water. Lamesauce. You want the can?" Scott asked over his shoulder.   

[meitantei.livejournal.com]

…Okay, Shinichi wasn’t even going to ask Scott about the ‘power ups.’ The guy probably (well, more than probably) played too many video games as it was; no need to encourage it further. He just held back, holding the flashlight so Scott could see and praying that his new companion wouldn’t get his hand bitten off while grabbing the Coke.

His fears were unfounded, however, because the soda came out of the fridge looking perfectly normal. Shinichi still didn’t want to drink it of course, but the cans were some of the first things he’d yet seen at nightshift that looked even close to normal. “Yeah, let me see.” He reached out and grabbed it, turning it over in his hands. Looked like a standard American-issue can of Coke. Felt like it too. The ingredients label, the nutrition information; all was as it should have been.

Except for one thing.

“Hey, Scott. Look. No expiration date.”

[vstheworld]

"Really?" Scott pulled his own cola can out again, checking it over to make sure Shinichi's hadn't just been a misprint. Absenceprint. Whatever. Sure enough, there was no expiration date or dates of any other kind to be found. Scott's eyes widened. "My god. Shinichi, do you realize what this means?"

A dramatic pause. Scott's hand trembled around the can in awe. 

"...We have just discovered immortal Coke."

[meitantei.livejournal.com]

Immortal Coke?

Shinichi snorted, in spite of himself. He couldn’t help it. It was just too ridiculous. “Caffeine is the ambrosia of the gods,” he agreed with a grin. But they needed to be a little more realistic here, didn’t they? “But I think it’s more that they don’t want us to know what year it is. The newspapers in town today were the same; they just had the day of the week instead of an actual date. I think Landel’s just messing with us, as usual.”

Anyway, now that they had their immortal Cokes, it was time to go.

“C’mon. Let’s see what’s behind door number one.”

[going here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/900785.html?thread=69806257#t69806257).]

[selfrescuer.livejournal.com]

[From here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/917071.html)]

Well, at least this room seemed more welcoming than the bathroom they had just come from. It reminded her of the room in her mansion she had allocated for her cleaning and gardening staff to lounge in during their breaks. Still not exactly useful, though. "Everyone still here?" She looked back over her shoulder as she walked forward, waiting for the group to finish crossing through the door.

[threepwood]

Guybrush squeaked into the room after his lady poo, eager to get as far away from the bathroom as possible. One step into the room, he turned sharply and plastered himself against the wall until the rest of the party had made it in and the door had shut behind them. He was safe for another day. Well, from the porcelain anyway.

"Hah! I was right!" he exclaimed, his feelings of paranoia and dread being replaced by cocky assuredness. "This place is chock-full of crazy stuff like this. I've got to admit that the doors taking us places they shouldn't is a new development. They usually lead where they're supposed to, like a good door should."

[voodooanonymous.livejournal.com]

With Guybrush, unsurprisingly, offering no puzzle-solving suggestions to their current predicament, LeChuck scanned the room quickly. At least it was larger than the last couple, and he could step in without squeezing everyone else.

Ignoring Elaine's inquiry (although it did warm his black heart to know she was concerned), he crossed the room to the shaded windows opposite. "Avast, we be on the second floor!" Of course, if they were being shuffled around magically, there was no reason they couldn't be moved up (unless they were on the second floor of the building to begin with, come to think of it), but he still wasn't expecting it.

The window was grimy and the heavy storm outside made it hard to see, but after running through corridors and pantries, he was glad to see there was an outside to this place. He could see a greenhouse and a walled backyard below, and possibly a forest beyond, although that was guesswork through the rain.

[fangirlfatale.livejournal.com]

This room wasn't much more interesting than the last one. (Privately, Morgan had her fingers crossed for an armory.) The big windows seemed like the most important feature for their purposes, but LeChuck was already over there by the time she entered and shook off the weird disorientation. Keeping one eye on him, Morgan went over to the side wall and peeked into the cabinet. Just more plastic cutlery. Assuming you could even call it "cutlery" if the toughest thing it could cut was chocolate pudding.

Behind her, Guybrush sounded confident again, which was usually a good thing. Something struck her about what he had to say, though. "A new development? Usually? Guybrush, how long have you been here?" Morgan asked.

It couldn't have been long, since she'd just seen him last night. He probably meant what he'd seen coming from his room earlier tonight, and she was just overthinking it. Yes, that sounded right.

[selfrescuer.livejournal.com]

Well that was something, at least, Elaine thought when LeChuck pointed out the view from the windows. Though the fact that they could move up and down in space as well as across wasn't much of a revelation, it was new information, at least, and goodness knew they needed all they could get of that. Not that Elaine particularly felt like giving LeChuck the satisfaction of knowing he had pointed out something useful, though, so she kept her mouth shut on the matter for the moment.

Instead, she focused on the other important matter (other than the question of why on earth Guybrush had been in such a terrible hurry to get out of the bathroom). Namely, that of exactly how familiar her fiancé (???) already was with what was going on. "You've been here at least long enough to have been allowed on today's field trip, I take it?" she spoke after Morgan, taking a look into the cabinet for herself. Rather than limiting herself to checking for sharp objects, as Morgan seemed to be doing, she looked over some of the machinery present as well, including a coffee maker and what looked like a small oven but with a futuristic look. "Where exactly were the lot of you today?" she asked, hoping to hear the answer to both Morgan's question and her own.

A few thermoses sat next to the oven thing, she noticed. Elaine paused, considering them. If they were going to be continually transported to random rooms, she wanted to collect as many useful items along the way as possible (like someone else in the room she knew, only with a bit more discerning taste in what she chose). She could see tightly sealed containers coming in handy for something like, say, mixing homemade chemical concoctions or explosives. However, she wasn't exactly a fan of stuffing items down her pants, and she could see carrying items under her arms getting cumbersome very quickly. After a brief pause, she sighed to herself and pulled the sheet off her head, unwrapping it into the large rectangle of fabric she had ripped it into before. A few quick re-ties, and the thing now functioned as a small carrying sack. Note to self: find new head scarf, and soon, she thought, depositing the thermoses and a few of the plastic knives (they were better than nothing) into the sack.

[threepwood]

This all seemed so backwards: instead of hopping to his usual ransacking ways, it was Guybrush who was standing and fielding questions while everyone else scattered around the room, heading for cabinets and counters and taking whatever they could find. He scratched his head idly, wondering if he'd really lost touch while he was dead- that was still if he'd been dead at all, though that really was starting to sound like a likely explanation for his current predicament.

"Today was day three," he answered both Morgan and Elaine at the same time. He kept his eyes on LeChuck as he wandered toward the cabinets himself, making sure he didn't Voodoo himself out the window somehow. Elaine mentioned the trip, so she'd been at the institute since at least earlier in the day. LeChuck, on the other hand, had said he'd arrived only a little bit before they met in the hallway.

Guybrush was thinking of taking a jar he'd spotted when something struck him. "Wait, did you three all arrive today?" His wifey poo, his biggest fan, and his nemesis showing up in the same day? Triple whammy.

[voodooanonymous.livejournal.com]

Ignoring Guybrush's question, having already answered for his part, LeChuck continued staring out the window. The visibility was too low to find out what he really wanted to know - whether they were on an island, and if he could recognize any landmarks. A volcano or a giant monkey head, for example, would be very convenient and not, at this point, surprising. It had been a while since he'd been to his old haunting ground, Monkey Island.

There were a few flashes of lighting through which he thought he could see mountains relatively close, so it would have to be a big island, and ruled out many possibilities. It didn't look like the Monkey Island skyline either, even looking up at the cliff-face from below.

"This ain't on any island I remember," he finally declared out loud, easily more concerned with his own discoveries that whatever Guybrush was trying to figure out.

[gamingsostfu.livejournal.com]

"Now, you know that's just stu-"

Matt didn't get a chance to finish what he was saying, because as soon as he leaned against the door, ready to dish out some real effort into opening what looked to be quite the heavy entryway, the thing gave out under him, opening right up and letting Matt stumble right through. This was how he discovered that the jumps became five times more disorienting when your entire body fell off balance while being teleported halfway across... whatever they were being teleported across, be it the ever-expansive space-time continuum, or the simple grounds of Landel's Institute.

Whichever, Matt wasn't a happy camper when he managed to make the spinning inside his head stop. Blinking around, it took him a moment to realize that he'd dropped his stuff on the floor. He figured he could just sit there a minute until everything was still again; Mello could just suck it up.

[swornandbroken.livejournal.com]

Mello was relieved enough that Matt hadn't noticed his momentary wavering (which he was already mentally revising to a side effect of the fucked-up travel) that he was perfectly willing to give his friend a moment to recover. He took advantage of the moment to pinch the bridge of his nose, in an attempt to fend off the incipient migraine. The dizziness every jump wasn't fun, but he was getting the hang of it. You stepped, and stopped. He'd always thought willpower was more than a match for purely physical concerns like sleep and pain, anyway.

They were obviously back (still?) in the Institute, and just as obviously in a place not intended for the prisoners.

"It's not stupid," he told Matt, heading over to the cabinet. "It's the difference between people who get shit done and people who play by rules they didn't write." If he had to fake it for the rest of his life to continue counting himself in the former category, he would.

[gamingsostfu.livejournal.com]

Matt made a noise, half groan, half sigh. "Christ," he mumbled, getting to his feet and reaching for the crowbar and flashlight. The packages of food had obviously seen better days, but Matt liked to think that was the Institute's fault. They'd be nice and safe in my desk drawer if it weren't for all this forced scattering of the masses, he pouted to himself, not showing a trace of it in his expression. Instead, he set his face into a glare, directed right at Mello.

"Not your preaching again," he shot back at the blond; he was not in the mood for that self-sufficient crap. Half the time, Matt expected Mello to spout something about Be all you can be, but that would be hypocritical. Or would Mello even care? Couldn't be sure.

Flicking the flashlight on, Matt took a quick look around the empty room, trying to figure out where the hell they were. Obviously in the Institute - but where in it? "D'you know where we are, Barbie?" A cheap shot, but he didn't care anymore.

[swornandbroken.livejournal.com]

"Staff break room?" Mello theorized out loud, opening up the cabinet. He didn't respond to Matt's attempted wisecrack, except to flick him off behind his back as he rummaged around. Damn, the cutlery in here was plastic, too. "I haven't been in here before." He dismissed most of the contents as equally useless, before taking out the small purple tin. The wonderful smell of decent chocolate hit him before he got its lid all the way off, and he grinned. "Oh, fuck yeah." This was definitely coming with him.

He turned back around and leaned against the cabinet. "Preaching my ass, Skipper. You call my opinion stupid, don't get shirty when I defend it." Yeah, that sounded good. Like someone who didn't even know what doubt was. He popped two mints into his mouth, and gave Matt a look meant to convey, Bring it, if you think you can.

[gamingsostfu.livejournal.com]

Matt snorted when he saw Mello grab the tin. "Addict," he mumbled, unable to help himself; pushing Mello's buttons was one way for him to deal with the stress of the night.

Instantly angry at the blond's words, he turned and glared right at his friend. "I think I'm allowed to be a little shirty, since it's your damn fault I'm here!"

As soon as the words left his mouth, Matt knew he'd crossed a line, but it was one he couldn't regret crossing; the words needed to be said, and he wasn't about to cowtow to Mello's will and take them back. Swallowing, he geared himself up for the fight he knew would ensue shortly.

[swornandbroken.livejournal.com]

"My fault?" Mello dropped the tin onto the top of the mini-fridge, with a clatter, and took a measured, menacing step toward Matt. "My. Fault?" Another step, and the bags and flashlight hit the floor. So what if it was? Matt wasn't allowed to say so. "Take that back," he said, being entirely too generous, given the situation. Matt was lucky Mello hadn't decked him again without giving him a chance to back off. He'd gotten off too easy before, and since then, Mello had been slammed with guilt that wasn't even rightfully his; it belonged to some future, possible, whatever version of himself. And he'd lost his bomb ingredients, and those damn nanomachines were putting ideas in his head he'd never normally have, trying to make him weak, trying to make him lose his sense of who he was. They'd almost succeeded, too. Yes, he definitely needed to hit something.

"Do I have to remind you, alleged genius, that I hadn't seen you in five years 'til your ass showed up here?"

[gamingsostfu.livejournal.com]

For a moment, cold fear flooded through Matt at his best friend's tone, and the look in his eye. But as soon as the words sunk in, he found his eyes narrowing in return as he turned to glare fully back at Mello; it seemed he was standing his ground. "Fuck you!" he shouted, letting all the tension and annoyance of the entire day out. "Do I need t'remind you that I just saw you last night - and now, after helping with your hare-brained scheme to bring down Kira - which probably failed - I'm dead! As in not living anymore!"

Well, that was debatable, since he was obviously standing there, breathing, but it was still a turn of events that he was not at all pleased about.

Plus he was really starting to feel anxious without his smokes. He needed to work out some of whatever was wrong with him before he really exploded, and this seemed just the way to do it. He knew that pushing Mello's buttons would force the blond into pushing some of his own, and a potentially crazed button-pushing match would probably ensue. They both needed to work some of their stress out, and was there a more manly way to do so than with fists?

Though Matt was definitely dreading those fists. Definitely.

[scalyfishman.livejournal.com]

[From here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/921466.html?thread=69926266)]

No rain, as predicted. Depth Charge stayed perfectly dry as they walked from the darkness of the shed into... the darkness of a whole new room. Of course. They were in the actual Institute building again, that much he could make out, but he didn't think he'd ever seen this room before.

Directing his flashlight around the room he could pick out a couch at the back, under a wide set of-- windows? Hard to tell at first, but those looked like blinds. In fact, there were a whole lot of chairs in this part of the room, and a table set in the center just waiting to be gossiped over. This was a regular little pitstop, huh? There was even a kitchen on the other side of the room, too. The most he could say was that he didn't see any immediate signs of monster activity, and even that wasn't exactly shining praise.

He turned to Hime, eyebrows raised. "Not exactly useful, huh? Unless you're planning on taking a nap and forgot to tell me."

[chainsaw-royal.livejournal.com]

Hime had no problems with Depth Charge taking the lead, burdened as she was. It seemed to be unnecessary so far, however. Despite the apparent lack of monsters though, Hime remained in the door way, foot jamming it open.

"Not particularly, no, but I've other uses while we've still time," she mused, looking about. "Bring over one of the chairs - now that we're not connected to Marc, I'd like to try something."

Perhaps it was a moot point given how late at night it was, but Hime was still at least curious to see if she could solve this puzzle much as she'd solved the spell cast on her mansion once upon a time.

[scalyfishman.livejournal.com]

"Other uses?" With a chair? Not that it didn't sound a little non-sequitur-ish or anything, but hey. Wasn't like they were in any immediate danger, or like they had any real plan to follow anymore except 'walk through doors, pray for something useful'. Anyway, Depth Charge wasn't going to be letting his guard down any time soon.

He headed over to the seating area and hauled one of the plastic chairs over to Hime, standing it in front of her at the door. She still hadn't taken her foot out yet, he noticed, so he took the handle and pulled it open properly to save her one squashed slipper. "What's the plan? You gonna try and jam the door or something?"

[chainsaw-royal.livejournal.com]

"More or less. I noticed the doors have been closing on their own," Hime replied, taking the chair from Depth Charge and placing it firmly in the doorway. Once she did, she moved out of the way and let the door close on it, wedging it in place. Beyond, she could still see the darkness of the gardening shed. So far, so good.

"As I believe I mentioned, I dealt with something similar to this before," she explained, picking up her spoils from before and trotting across the room towards the couch. Or, more accurately, the windows. "The rooms continue to shuffle every time the doors close, but as long as they remain open, they remain connected. By opening, or in this case, jamming open all the doorways, we can create a stable set of locations." Of course, as she'd also noted, these situations, while similar, were hardly the same. For one, this wasn't her mansion. For another, if they ended up in Doyleton or outside again, this method really didn't mean anything. "Well, I doubt we can actually isolate the culprit through this method, but there's nothing to lose. At worst, we can make a trail we can follow back if we end up somewhere unsavory."

She stopped in front of the windows, staring at them for a moment before stepping aside. She simply looked back to the robot and pointed with her fuel can at the glass.

"We're going through there."

[scalyfishman.livejournal.com]

Made sense so far. Depth Charge listened distractedly as she left the chair in the doorway and moved across the room, still keeping a careful eye on the kitchen area- if they were going to be attacked from anywhere, it was going to be from there.

"I guess that could work. It's worth a shot," he agreed when she finished her explanation, looking back to where she stood by the window. Wasn't as though they had any other options. Anyway, the logic made enough sense, he supposed, in a backwards kind of way, but what wasn't backwards about this entire-

"... through there?" he echoed. As in, through the window. Right. Quickly, he hefted up the blinds on his side of the window so that he could look out, just in case he'd been wrong and- yep, they were on the second floor. Then he checked her face for any signs she was joking. Oh, Primus. "You're serious, aren't you?" Even he could say why throwing a couple of human bodies out of a window was crazy idea, and he wasn't even human.

[chainsaw-royal.livejournal.com]

"I don't see another door, do you?" Hime said impatiently, as if the robot's trepidation was completely unfounded. As the previous experience, both in her own world and in the bookstore earlier, had proven, windows worked just the same as doors, so the fact that they were on the second story matter little. Really, if anything they should be afraid every door they stepped through might send them out a second story window, seeing as Landel had little trouble letting them get outside, unlike the spell she'd been trapped with before.

Of course, if this window did let them go outside like it was normally supposed to... well, that would be a victory in its own way, so long as they were quick enough to get back inside and not fall. Well, not as if a fall from two stories up was necessarily fatal.

"My hands are full, so breaking it's up to you," she encouraged him, though her monotone was hardly encouraging.